Automotive Fleet, February 2016

fueled the development of telematics into what is becoming their indispensable role in capturing all types of real time vehicle and driver data But what may be the biggest factor is the role the driver is playing in evolving not the technology per se but the way it is being used I think drivers are embracing it said Kavanagh of WEX At the end of the day they know they are in a company owned asset and they have a right and responsibility to be safe and if there are tools that can help them with that and help them to change their behavior then theyre all starting to understand that and embrace that This has led to the development of gamification of the driver scorecards with companies using the systems to build in some friendly competition and motivate the drivers to be better than their peers For LoJack this has been a development that has been completely customer driven and not part of its menu of services Nowhere in our owners manual do we talk about gamification Castelli said This is some of the out of the box training weve seen I think a lot of the folks whether its a dispatcher or a purchasing agent or CEO that once they have their fleet managed by a telematics solution yes were going to get into all of the safe driving and speeding and harsh braking and fuel economy and idling but again I would say that getting driver buy in at the time of the training program initiating gamification where it creates and fosters teamwork you work together with colleagues with the greater goals of the company addressing safe driving thats where weve seen the creativity come about Where weve seen them take our device and enhance the driver experience while reaching company goals WEXs Kavanagh too has seen the benefits of drivers taking an active involvement in telematics We have a customer that is using the carrot vs the stick and what their drivers do is self report he said They run a report at the end of the day and if they have a clean report of no speeding incidents for the day they hand that report in and they get a gift card back The company said that theyre not handing out as many gift cards as they were hoping they would but they have seen a change in behavior Going hand in glove with the gamification is instant feedback with either an audible warning or online coaching For Castelli driver buy in is crucial for making a fleets telematics program successful I put driver buy in at the top of the list because if you dont get driver buy in its not going to happen he said Optimizing the Future While telematics has evolved from a relatively simple technology to a complex one extremely quickly this may only be the start of where the industry is headed One glimpse of the future may already be available from Geotab The hardware manufacturer and telematics provider has an open source device that allows customers to use Geotabs software develop its own using a Geotab provided software kit or use another companys solution Its really essential that an open platform happens for our overall industry observed Colin Sutherland VP of sales and marketing for Geotab We have an appetite from customers who are becoming more data centric than software centric Thats the most important thing weve come to learn over the last several years Customers are becoming savvy in regards to the information theyre collecting and their vehicles and they want to share that data with more than just the telematics user interface they want to share it with their payroll system and their fleet management company and their fuel card provider and their safety system so it becomes essential to the business CalAmps Weir Jones echoing Sutherland sees more access to data coming from the OEMs fueling change The OEMs themselves are really expanding the vocabulary of what we can pull off the BUS from all of these vehicles and thats something CalAmp is really focused on How can we take all of this information and use it he said The other technological innovation that will become more solidified over the next several years according to Driscoll of GPS Insight and Lisk of Lytx is the use of video I think telematics solutions can become smarter through whats learned in the video Lisk said For example if someone is drifting out of a lane in classic telematics as long as its abrupt enough it will simply record that there was a sudden lane shift The video would help detect that they drifted over the lane and the inside view would show that the driver was distracted That video is reviewed and through that process you begin to learn that there are patterns of behavior that are more symptomatic of being distracted Thats going to feed back into the vehicle telematics and eventually vehicles will become smarter For example if a driver is drifting that is symptomatic of being distracted there may be alerts in the vehicle that are more effective in warning them Telogis Frey believes telematics ability to optimize business processes will be critical for the future Increasingly telematics platforms are focused on optimization of the business plan be it the work schedule be it the route be it the fleet be it where I should put my facility so increasingly we want to be out ahead of the plan and say whats going to happen in the next hour the next day the next week he said This optimization will likely mean a change in the way data is delivered to fleets The future of telematics is adapting data information to a customer need Its not software user interface Sutherland said Anybody who is selling software as a service needs to change their thinking Its not software as a service that youre selling youre actually selling specific solutions for customers and youve got to become not a commodity of user interfaces You better become more solution oriented and address the problem you have as a business and how I can help you to solve them with simple to apply tool and thats where this industry is going to go Its all going to be very solution driven to the client and its exciting times Future telematics solutions may see another significant transformation into predictive analytics platforms I think over the years the telematics companies are going to be asked to develop more complex algorithms about how to tie data all together into something meaningful like a safety score Fleetmatics Ewing predicted I could see trends over time about having to be predictive over being analytical I think predictive will be a day that we get to at some point AF telematics AUTOMOTIVE FLEET I FEBRUARY 2016 38 SUTHERLAND Geotab